#BandcampGold-Ferret by Dominic and The Lucid

The most terrifying thing I’ve ever encountered as an artist is falling out of my groove. Everyone gets to that place in life where they realize that their creative process doesn’t need to be perfect it just has to make sense for what you are doing. Once you do it a few times over a short period of time you’ve found a groove. When you lose the groove, desperation settles in where instinct resided and in the sweaty rush to get it back, that desperation keeps you a long way from the groove (since it was established with a clear head and now you’re a basket case).

Dominic & The Lucid certainly had a groove going. Waging The Wage set the template for rocking right into the hearts of jam band/phish fans. Season of The Sun is so wholly secure in its psychedelic rock identity that it straddles the line between comfort serenity and boredom. The collective established a wrinkle free sound that’s calm became its own worst enemy. Do you ever want to clothesline a stranger just because you’ve had an awful week? Nope, not in Lucid-verse. The closest I came to being a Lucid fan was on 2011’s The Lucid. That album was such a fractured, miserable and broken emotional journey that I finally felt the third dimension of emotions being exposed; something undesirable (example: excommunation).

Their new album Ferret is not the old groove, but the continuation of a separate one. It brandishes all the warmth and awe for the world, the tools you know them for. Listening is easy to do but it’s different this time. Once the drums crash on Apex Predator you know things have changed. Dom’s voice is still a stunning weapon he uses to make low stakes jaunty songs much more important than they should be (example: Catnip Curious). Stoned In The Suburbs is tremendous and displays a melodic intelligence that allows Dom and company to actually sound like later stage Beatles; not because they are trying but because the skill sets align.

Hell no, I don’t understand Ferret. The title track is a minute and twenty eight seconds and sounds like the score for an Italian 70’s horror film. A great score but….why is this the centerpiece? 11 Week Heartbeat is an incredible feat in every way you can gauge: machete sharp songwriting matched by pitch perfect vocal delivery, and like the rest of the songs on Ferret it really moves. New sounds shift in and old ones shift out, the song doesn’t just sit there from the first thirty seconds on. Contrast that with the scaled down, simple folk jam Madawaska (which is exactly what you think it will be from the title), contrast that with the radically loaded musical experience of Commodore Snakevision; smashing drums, super catchy chorus and it only lasts one minute and eighteen seconds…WHAT?! The Boy From Avignon has a Spanish almost Fanta label vibe and is assuredly over my head, I think he starts singing in French.

These guys ( Dominic Lavoie, Nathan Cyr, Charles Gagne, Scott Mohler) achieve a really interesting album through the confusion I’m describing. Even when I fall out of knowing why things are happening I trust them to do it and that trust pays off. Weird is exciting and weird is definitely Ferret. When the didgeridoo jumps into You Can Sing just like it did in 1993 when Calogero locked eyes with his first love on the bus in A Bronx Tale it put a smile on my face. Royale Milky is so perfectly reminiscent of the world Dom created on the first ShaShaSha album, the one that got me really interested in him and them and figuring out the difference, figuring out the strength in both.

I’ve listened to Ferret with at least three generations of people who all enjoyed it. Dominic does roar on this, he does give you real emotions; he turns the music in directions you don’t expect and traverses the distance from band to audience that psychedelic music leaves. Even in a sweet tone You Can Sing is really sad and unsuccessfully hiding its anger as he asks over and over “why are we rivals?” with a tone that mixes pleading and distaste. Very few artists in my local environment are as fearlessly capable of creating embarrassingly beautiful vocal performances. Dom cares and owns that.

All of this is just me biding my time before I declare that Solid Gold Julian is my favorite thing right now. His voice really sounds like Prince going full on glamorous bar band. The guitar work is fantastic. Ferret makes such absolutely brilliant use of John Maclaine on trombone and Chris Chasse on Trumpet. Since everybody loves the nice guy he has his pick of who to work with and he’s made a full return in wanting to surprise. He went back to ShaShaSha to find his groove. When I interviewed him he told me he just started doing the ideas that sounded good and that might sound easy but for an artist working on new music for the first time in five years, it’s a mighty accomplishment. This is really really exciting because I’ve been wanting him to surprise me for a while.